


Malleus, Incus, Stapes

by ishka



Series: Art Lessons [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Confessions, Fluff, M/M, Mild Language, sagely wise friend kisumi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:45:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5433611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishka/pseuds/ishka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine this: Haruka in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Malleus, Incus, Stapes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkstarpirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkstarpirate/gifts).



> Sort of a continuation of a dumbass comic I drew without the slapstick comedy elements. It's not necessary to see it to get this. I was discussing cutesy college scenarios with [PSP](http://pinkstarpirater.tumblr.com) using this nude model!Sousuke art student!Haru and said I'd write it, then proceeded to write next to nothing of what we talked about but... it's there in spirit. If you know me you know I can't focus on anything.

Imagine this: Haruka in love.

It’s not at all what he expected and he doesn’t like it one bit. It actually requires a constant diligence to maintain. There’s a fine line between obsessively occupied thoughts and real, actual feelings. He believes he has the latter, but could just as easily be the former if he sits there and thinks about it for too long. For example, sometimes he spaces out and thinks about Godzilla a lot. It doesn’t mean he’s in love with her. _Especially_ not the newest iteration.

So he tries not to think too much about it, but the reminder is there every time he flips open his giant sketchpad for a new page, so he ends up thinking about it a lot. It’s coincidence that he lands on that drawing every time, of course.

There are seventy-seven muscles in the back, grouped into three distinct layers. It’s a _marvel_ that so much is packed into one area. The human body amazes him. He doesn’t have much of a need to memorize the musculoskeletal details of the average human form, but he has. As an artist, he only needs to be concerned with what goes where and how, as well as how everything bunches or extends depending on the movement. But he can’t help it, he finds the interconnectedness of the human form transcendent of anything he’s ever considered remotely appeasing, a feeling that might give Rei a run for his money, down to the three smallest bones of the ear that he will literally never need to draw.

(malleus, incus, and stapes. in case anyone asked)

Makoto sure appreciated his knack for instantaneous memorization during finals last year. Anatomy and physiology; or a six-hundred page textbook of vocabulary banks to Makoto. But to Haruka it was more like a river. One muscle flows into the next on a tuck, a wrap, or a joining- the skeletal bedrock providing a frame. His art has only improved since that class.

Haruka falling in love with an entire person begins with Haruka falling in love with the hard outer edge of the trapezius muscle on one Sousuke Yamazaki, and when he realizes this he briefly thinks Gou and all of her inclinations had it right, really, and that her obsessions don’t seem so out of place now. But it’s a little different, for him anyway. Because he was given the opportunity to recreate it for himself, not consume it as it was, and that’s why he’s in this situation.

Haruka cannot understand anything that he hasn’t attempted to recreate himself. This is why he’s drawn portraits of _all_ of his friends at some point or another. Why he stacks mackerel in thoughtful patterns along the margins of his notebooks. He’s not _in love_ with any of that though, which is how he knew this was different straight away as soon as he set his pencil down (6B; the dark and thick gradient but not quite the darkest or the thickest). The final scratch of the rough graphite leaving him with something other than a feeling of standard accomplishment that comes with finishing a piece. Knowing he just created something _other_ , and somehow understanding Yamazaki on an entirely new level because of it.

Sousuke was only their nude model for his life drawing class; totally coincidence. Nothing flowery or special about it and no matter which way Haruka turns it over in his mind, there’s no other way to present this information to himself. It was hardly fate or anything serendipitous. As far as he could learn from Makoto- who shares a few classes with the guy every other semester- Sousuke was hard up for cash and the art department pays a flat rate for such things. 

And once he noticed Haruka in the front row staring intently, Sousuke looked like he’d rather invert Haruka’s face in with his scowl alone than sit there and let Haruka draw him like _that._

Like _that_ meaning _exposed._ Their last encounter with Sousuke’s exposure between them being terse and dramatic and with the two of them at some of their lowest points of existence while they- poetically- traveled upwards in an elevator.

Honestly though, Haruka was the exposed party in this situation. Nudity isn’t exposure in the least. Falling in love and having it all over your face as it happens- as he drew it? That’s exposure. Sousuke had nothing to be concerned with. Haruka has now a very many things to be concerned with. None of it is very nice feeling, either, he’d like to remind himself. Love doesn’t feel good at all.

He doesn’t know Sousuke. He doesn’t want to love Sousuke, not in that way. If he’d been thinking straight he would’ve only drawn his body, never his face. If he hadn’t, he never would’ve captured Sousuke’s kindness he’s never given credit to or the undercurrent of something sort of sad and scarred over that Haruka sees himself in and never has before. Never would’ve used his softest lead on the barest peek of eye glaring daggers into Haruka over his shoulder as he held his pose for twenty minutes. Glaring, but full of so much fear and honesty and Haruka’s never been taken in by anything like it before. 

But the 6B lead pulled a final line across the outer edge of his trapezius, and it was the same thing as Haruka signing off his rights to objective appreciation. He recreated Sousuke knowing full well he would come out of it with the sort of understanding of the other that he’s been pining for for years; reconstructed him from the ground up layer by layer. And he loves what he sees, but maybe that’s also why he’s never drawn him before now.

Yet he feels coerced into feeling this way, and who would even hear him out without laughing in his face? Most people don’t fall in love with someone because they got the chance to express all seventy-seven muscles of the subject’s back on paper in basic pencil, even the outwardly unnoticeable ones (rest assured- Haruka visualized every single one of them). 

It is so typical of Yamazaki to back him into a corner over something that isn’t his fault.

He opens his sketchbook to draw Kisumi as he’s hunched over a book with a whole lot of numbers and apparently some of them are _imaginary,_ which about blew Haruka’s mind to learn of and he’s still not one-hundred percent sure how it’s possible but Kisumi insists it’s true ( _“Or is it?”_ he asked coyly, wriggling his fingers and making a _woooooo_ noise as if the numbers were haunted). 

Kisumi is an objective party. Kisumi can keep secrets where Makoto or Rin cannot. _At all._ And Kisumi goes to another university, so he won’t just run into Sousuke and talk like Makoto might. He might still spill it to Makoto, but it’s a risk Haruka is willing to take at this point, because this issue is _pressing._ He’s in love with someone else, maybe for the first time ever? And _definitely_ not in the same way that the loves Godzilla.

When he opens his sketchbook, he accidentally ends up on the drawing that started all of this, and sighs. Loud enough for Kisumi to look at him like _he’s_ the wistful one of the two of them. 

“Are you going to draw me?”

“Yeah.”

Kisumi shrugs and continues to labor over ghostly figures. “Get my good side.”

“I love Sousuke.”

Does he look up? Does he visibly come to a mental halt and replay that line to make sure he still has halfway decent hearing? Does he just not know what to do with himself at all and reactively throw his textbook at Haruka instead?

Of course not, this is Kisumi. He punches some obscenely long formula into his calculator while he speaks.

“Is that so? Good for you.”

“I don’t like it. What do I do?”

Kisumi holds up a hand to pause the conversation, taps a few more numbers into the device with the other, and slams solve with a level of confidence Haruka is taking mental notes on and nods satisfactorly at the result before writing it down and giving Haruka his attention.

“Well you tell him, I guess.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“Get to know him and then tell him. Duh.”

Haruka’s only answer is to turn his sketchbook around and show Kisumi _The Problem._

Kisumi runs his eyes over it thoughtfully. “Has he always had a dimple on his ass?”

“Kisumi.”

He laughs. “Ask him out.”

“He hates me.”

“Show him _that,_ ” he drawls, gesturing to the drawing, “and he won’t.” Kisumi turns back to homework as if he didn’t just pay Haruka one of the highest compliments he’s ever received. He’s a great student. It’s something to behold. But once Makoto gets home Kisumi can’t focus in the slightest, so he’s pretty good at fitting all of his homework in while Makoto’s still at class or swim practice. Haruka knows this because he’s always at their apartment, and finds them a downright fascinating study.

But maybe Kisumi’s onto something.

“You know Haru,” Kisumi mumbles after a while, to Haruka’s surprise. Kisumi usually gets everything he’s trying to say out in one go, and doesn’t regret anything he might’ve forgotten. “It’s just love. Like, at this stage, a strong crush even. How you feel about a new fish dish. Don’t work yourself up so much.”

Haruka’s nearly indignant over such a statement, over downplaying a feeling that’s been consuming him for over a week, but figures Kisumi has a point to this. “Love alone doesn’t mean anything. You gotta do something with it yourself. It’s like a...” He stops and furrows his eyebrows, searching for the outlandish metaphor he figures Haruka can relate to. Haruka likes to watch him try and do this, so he never tells Kisumi he doesn’t really need to put so much effort into relating to him. “You know, your sketchbook. Or something. It’s got a lot of potential, but not until you do something with it and make it your own.”

...That was actually oddly relatable. Go figure. And now he has an idea.

Haruka turns the sketchbook back around in his lap and flips to a clean page, mind quiet on the matter for the first time since it started going. He draws Kisumi, and does not fall in love with him. Even when he draws part of his trapezius.

-

It’s easier said than done.

Haruka isn’t a self-conscious person by any means, but walking up to someone who actively dislikes you to gift them a naked drawing of themself as a means of confession in hopes they’ll change their opinion at least a little bit and consider spending time with you has an entire set of fallacies and lofty logistics all its own, not to mention asking his target if he’d sit for him again.

Something that’s become apparent as well is that he’s in love with the idea of Sousuke he made for _himself._ He keeps thinking he doesn’t really _know_ him. But it’s not quite sinking in. He wants to draw him again to make sure this is what he is starting to hope it is. Love, and not obsessive thoughts.

“Yamazaki,” he calls as Sousuke exits a class in the communications building. He’s got enough on his mind, so he’ll not dwell on the functional irony of that. 

Sousuke stutter-steps and looks at Haruka like he’s risen from the dead. Haruka waits for him to keep walking, but he takes one more look around to make sure he was the target of his own surname and steps towards Haruka, so that’s hurdle number one cleared. 

He’s already two shades of red deeper, and Haruka can’t begin to imagine why. It’s really not that embarrassing to model in front of a group of adults who do this constantly. “Nanase?”

Haruka wastes no time, as he’s done enough of that. He pulls the rolled up drawing from under his arm and holds it out. “Here’s the drawing I made of you. I think it’s nice.” 

Sousuke takes it as if it’s laced with fiberglass. “You’ll have to excuse me not revealing whatever you turned me into to the public.”

That’s sort of confusing, and he doesn’t know what he expected but it certainly wasn’t that. “It’s just you.”

He looks once bitten twice shy, like Haruka’s drawn him with elephant ears in the past and he doesn’t want to fall for it again. “...What’s going on?”

“Would you model for me again?” Haruka blurts out nearly all at once. “I like… drawing you.” It’s mostly true, even if he’s annoyed with these feelings it caused in general.

Sousuke’s eyebrows don’t even twitch. This is probably the vacant expression he has on during all of his lectures. The poker face he bets with. “Come again?”

“I like to draw you.”

“Did Makoto put you up to this?!” he whisper-shouts. “That big damn mouth of his.”

Love in this form- as a blank sketchbook- is difficult, and full of too many side-steps and uncertainties. It’s tiresome, he’s over it. “Makoto? He has no idea. Why are you asking about _Makoto?_ ”

“Because you _hate_ me,” Sousuke rumbles. “What the fuck are you trying to pull here? Didn’t you get your fuckin’ jollies off the first time? Now you want to mock me _again?_ ”

He can’t help it. He laughs. Hard, all things considered, assuaging no one’s fears that Sousuke is being mocked. Sousuke just looks scandalized, and too shocked by it to tell him to cut it out. Haruka’s not an unhappy person, but he doesn’t know the last time he laughed quite like this.

“Just look at the damned drawing, Sousuke,” Haruka sighs after he’s recovered and upright again. 

“... I swear…” Sousuke mutters, pulling the tie on the twine Haruka placed to keep the piece securely rolled. “If this is mean or some sort of joke I’m gonna… be...” 

The drawing unfurls, Haruka is _not_ holding his breath.

“ _You_ … I-,” Sousuke snaps his mouth into a line and rolls the drawing back up at a breakneck pace. “You made-” He sighs irritably, and scratches at the back of his head. Five shades deep now, and Haruka realizes Sousuke was never embarrassed about modeling.

Haruka _breathes._ “Will you model for me again? I have a blank sketchbook I’d like to break in.”

Haruka cannot understand anything he doesn’t attempt to recreate for himself, and with 206 bones and 640 muscles standing in front of him- all of which never hated Haruka as he feared, and a percentage of which now grinning and at ease- he has his work cut out for him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hate SouHaru, come bitch about them with me on [tumblr](http://iskabee.tumblr.com).


End file.
